[quote]This card lets you have a much stronger early game (tapers off in late game). It lets you have either EASY accesses to centrals or makes them spend money they don’t want. Seems like the perfect attack card to me even if they get to choose.
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I play Anarch a lot, and I don’t see it being better than Recon.
Look at exactly how you’re saying it works: you’re playing it on a central you want to run to get an easy access. But if the corp wants to rez the ice, they’ll do so and Cyber Threat didn’t help (it hurt you!). And if they don’t want to rez the ice, they won’t and Cyber Threat didn’t help (it hurt you!) because you’d have got that easy access anyway.
The only time Cyber Threat is good is when the Corp wants you to run into some ice you can’t break: punishing sentries, punishing codegates. There are typically five possibilities that can really mess the boardstate up if you run into them unprepared: Archer, Grim, Komainu, Shinobi, Inazuma (and the latter two are arguable as they are rare and require additional conditions to be satisfied).
But Cyber Threat doesn’t let you avoid those cards forever, nor does it even always work (they can rez a different piece of ice). Like so many Anarch cards, it’s extremely situational. Unlike similar situational cards (Queen’s Gambit, Demolition Run…) the payoff isn’t even that good when that situation arises. Cyber Threat is a bad card, and if it were in the same faction as Forged Activation Orders or Recon (both of which are better but still not good!), it wouldn’t even be discussed.
Cyber Threat has times when it’ll be exactly what you need. But the example you use – getting into a remote when they can’t afford to rez Ice – is one where just running that remote’d do you as well. It’s less safe, but saves the card, and is the whole point of Reina and related abilities.
Anyone that rezzes ice in response to facechecking on centrals is silly, and is just as capable of deciding to shut you out if they need to.
I’m also really curious which corps you’re seeing. Astrobiotics and HB:FA are the only builds I can think of that can ever get through a full game without putting Agendas into remotes – and even then, NBN often has to play out the first Astroscript and leave it in play for a turn.
RP Glacier, Red Coats, Supermodernism, most PE decks I’ve seen, Tennin in all styles, Medtech, pre-Midseasons Psychographics… they all score primarily after an Agenda has been in play for a turn. And Cyber Threat won’t do much against any of them. Heck, it cannot be used to steal from an RP remote. So even the “get them to rez punishing ice instead of me hitting it, parasite that, go in ignoring it” plan doesn’t work there, where it seems to me it’d be most useful.
Peekay’s initial thought, that you could use it to avoid being surprised by new Ice once their server was already two-deep (thus avoiding an Ichi or Grim if you know you can break everything else) seems more valid, but still not worth the card slot.
I’d much rather just make the runs, most of the time.
Great review of a very—imo!—mediocre set, uh, @mediohxcore :). Thanks for picking up the reins for Alexfrog.
Almost nothing in here worth a deckslot imo, but Lotus Field is going to move the meta just because lots of people are going to play it like it is some kind of magic bullet against crims. I think I’m going to let other people play it for me for a little while. MOVE THAT META FOR ME, OTHER PEOPLE.
NEH would be cooler if it opened up a new line of play for NBN, but it doesn’t—it’s another way of playing the same three lines of play :).
Domestic Sleepers is probably gonna turn up in a lot of annoying-as-crap HB decks, innit? Ye gods, HB with Archer. Just what the netrunning world needed ;)!
Leprechaun might well be good, but mind the flavor text!
Ahh but you missed two big point I made before. When I play this card early I usually don’t care if they rez or I run. You would be shocked how often this situation comes up. Either way I win with either info or a easy access. Secondly I usually want to have either medium or nerve agent installed so I can get multi access. Try the card out and you may change your mind. The biggest downside for me is that it is a priority event.
In my meta I see a stupid amount of HB FA and NBN FA. It is kinda annoying. Your right about the comment about remote servers. I rarely use cyber threat on it anyway.
I consider Mutate a counter to Parasite. If ICE is going to die anyway, why not trade it, something is better than nothing. Also, what happens if you Mutate ICE that is hosting a Knight/Caissa? Does the Runner get the Program back, or does it get scrapped with the ICE?
parasite usually kills the ice the turn it hits, so mutate doesn’t help much with that. also there’s too much RNG in getting an ice that does something unless you set it up
I wish that it could be, but I feel that (especially in Jinteki) most of the ice that the runner’s going to parasite aren’t going to survive long enough to matter. Lotus and Bako have immediate-ish recourse, if need be.
And, no, anything installed on the trashed ice gets trashed as well. Mildly useful to bump off a Knight, I just don’t worry enough about Knight to want to devote a deckslot to it (and the other Caissa are much less common/powerful).
I guess I’d just usually rather take the risk and run. It’s not so much that Cyber Threat isn’t useful, it’s that most of the effect (for me/what I see, especially) can be achieved in other ways. There are a number of times I’d be glad to have it, but I don’t think they’re omnipresent enough to make me want to run it over some of the other things I run in Anarch.
I played a lot with Mutate, check it out on my Youtube channel. It’s fun but definitely not competitive. The thing that struck me is how much better it would’ve been in the Core Set days. Nowadays the problem is twofold:
Jinteki simply has too many good cards now to spend 3 slots on Mutate and then 3 slots on a bad card (Precognition). Are you going to cut insanely good cards like Caprice Nisei to fit them in?
There are just too many good answers to large ICE in the meta. Everyone has answers in their 45 to that free Archer or Tollbooth and may only need to make a few multi-access runs past it to win the game. Recurring Faerie or Sharpshooter, Inside Job, Emergency Shutdown, Femme Fatale, Parasiting it into fixed breaker range or just Parasiting it to death.
Shiro should’ve been the partner to Mutate, but FFG is terrible at balance. Put Shiro at 2 cost, 4 strength and we might have something.
In OCTGN testing, I’ve found Lotus Field near-irrelevant. It’s terrible against Atman and the current rigs used by Anarchs, so really you’re only playing it against Criminals.
My Andy deck already runs 1x Passport and this has been more than sufficient-- Passport handles Lotus Field on centrals, Femme/Shutdown/Inside Job handles it on remotes. It’s possible that better/more sophisticated players will be able to wield this more effectively, but for now I think it resides in the Elizabeth Mills/Swordsman/Unregistered S&W '35 category.
I’m not seeing the comparison between Lotus Field and Tollbooth. Tollbooth is epic because of the credit hit when you encounter it, so it taxes even when it’s beaten; Lotus field is just glorified gear check because it’s no better than Quandary against any breaker rig that has it properly covered, @Kingsley is on the money.
It does its job in deck design, not during play, assuming enough of the corps are packing it. But my belief is that it’s at an awkward price point for the corp - too expensive really for what it costs a prepared deck to get through it so probably slows the corp down too much for most of them to pay influence to splash it. For that reason Jinteki players kinda have to always carry it, and if they do the other corps profit because the runners are slowed down by their choice of rig. If Jinteki doesn’t carry it (or becomes irrelevent again) then runners carry on as they are with Yog / Sucker.
It’s an important card and meta-defining. Justifies a 4.5 rating but I think the decks that benefit from it are the ones who don’t play it.
It’s totally possible that Lotus Field isn’t the complete shit for every deck in the world, and if Atman is the breaker of choice, it isn’t actually even good. However, the gear-checking aspect of Tollbooth is exactly what Lotus replicates; that’s what I meant when I said it. Decks that want to gear check the opponent will definitely want some Lotuses: it’s great in Weyland, good in any speed-oriented fast advance deck, and reasonable most other places. It definitely has a huge effect on deckbuilding, but I’m convinced it’s at least pretty good in a lot of decks, (AstroBiotics, Weyland, most Jinteki decks), and a reasonable choice in others (HB anything). Of course it isn’t going to tax a runner like Tollbooth does. I just think Tollbooth is the closest comparison, (though maybe it’s closer to Hive).
Atman is a serious concern, of course. If you’re going to start Lotus Field, you probably just never want to play/rez it against Atman decks unless they set an Atman at 3 and you want to punish them by making them play another one on 4. If Atman is everywhere, you are probably wise to just stay away. I fail to see how it’s ‘terrible’ against current anarch rigs, though I also fail to see a consensus on what the current anarch rigs are. If you’re talking about overmind/knight, yeah, it’s pretty bad against that, but if those Anarchs are playing Yog.0, it’s still reasonable, even if they’re playing knight, too.
I think Midway Station Grid has a very decent effect actually - I think @mediohxcore’s analysis is incorrect to assume that NBN is the only faction that can use it. The biggest problem for NBN is is not so much whether it’s any good, but the fact that it’s competing with SanSan as the Region. It has huge potential to make taxing servers for other Corps. Probably still a low rating for now, but I think it’s worth an asterisk.
I don’t agree with that at all. Quandary gear checks in exactly the same way as Tollbooth - they just need a decoder. All that Lotus Field does is ensure that people play a rig that can get to Str 4, which makes Quandary better (because fewer people will play Yog and/or Parasite).
Tollbooth is the absolute opposite of a gear check ICE.
You can beat a Quandary with a single Parasite or a Yog. Lotus is more like Tollbooth in that it requires a non-Yog decoder AND money to install and break it.
Nasir is going to be very strong against Blue Sun. They will try to fake you out by throwing 3x Ice Walls out, most of the time you will be hitting big bucks on ICE you just saw them bounce back and probably play again. When they Oversight a Curtain Wall, next turn you’ll get their 14 credits.
Does that mean he will be worth playing, without a big core strategy that’s better than Kate? Probably not. But people are so overhyped for Blue Sun, an identity that basically says gain 20+ credits over the course of the game in exchange for 3 cards and 3 clicks. (3x Oversight, 3x Putting your big ICE back out the second time)
It’s exciting. I hope the meta shifts from NBN solitaire FA to glacier so he sees more play.
Midway Station Grid has a lot of potential, even if it might not fit into the meta right now. This was a strong card in original. It doesnt work well with a lot of the ice we typically use in NBN right now. Its not good with taxing tracer types. It really wants multi sub end the run ice (or punish, then end the run ice). I think it will be very good at some point, in something.
Primary Transmission Dish. It might still be terrible, but I dont think its clear that “if you want this, just play Making News”. Actually, it seems to me that “Near Earth Hub is just strictly better than other NBN IDs. Therefore, if you want to be an NBN deck with tracers, then instead of being Making News, play Near Earth with Primary Transmission Dish”.
That might be the case. I dont know for sure if it is, but Primary Transmission Dish, in a Near Earth Hub deck with tracers, might act like a super-PAD campaign.
Installing it in a new server draws you a card. If they run it face down and trash it, they lose $3 and a click for something that drew you a free card.
The first time you rez and use it (to power a Caduceus or Ash or whatever), it netted $1 (as long as the trace was actually important).
After that, you get to be super Making News until they spend a click and $3.
I feel it has some potential at least. Maybe its still bad, but to me its not ‘clearly doesnt even need testing to reject as bad’.